The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History

This work offers a sweeping reassessment of the Jiankang Empire (third to sixth centuries CE), known as the Chinese “Southern Dynasties.” It shows how, although one of the medieval world’s largest empires, Jiankang has been rendered politically invisible by the standard narrative of Chinese nationalist history, and proposes a new framework and terminology for writing about medieval East Asia. The book pays particular attention to the problem of ethnic identification, rejecting the idea of “ethnic Chinese,” and delineating several other, more useful ethnographic categories, using case studies in agriculture/foodways and vernacular languages. The most important, the Wuren of the lower Yangzi region, were believed to be inherently different from the peoples of the Central Plains, and the rest of the book addresses the extent of their ethnogenesis in the medieval era. It assesses the political culture of the Jiankang Empire, emphasizing military strategy, institutional cultures, and political economy, showing how it differed from Central Plains–based empires, while having significant similarities to Southeast Asian regimes. It then explores how the Jiankang monarchs deployed three distinct repertoires of political legitimation (vernacular, Sinitic universalist, and Buddhist), arguing that the Sinitic repertoire was largely eclipsed in the sixth century, rendering the regime yet more similar to neighboring South Seas states. The conclusion points out how the research reorients our understanding of acculturation and ethnic identification in medieval East Asia, generates new insights into the Tang-Song transition period, and offers new avenues of comparison with Southeast Asian and medieval European history.

State Management of River Dikes in Early China: New Sources on the Environmental History of the Central Yangzi Region

While it is generally believed that the agricultural colonization of the middle Yangzi wetlands began in Tang-Song times, newly discovered texts show that the early Han state administered river dikes in the region. The texts, which were written between 192 and 121 bce, calculate dike sizes in order to estimate corvée requirements for dike maintenance and discuss the area of new farmland to be created. Our picture of the early history of the Yangzi region has been distorted by the northern focus of early texts, but archaeological discoveries are correcting this bias and suggest that the conversion of the Central Yangzi lowlands to farmland began many centuries earlier than previously believed. On pense en général que la mise en valeur agricole des marais du moyen Yangzi a commencé sous les Tang et les Song. Or, des textes récemment découverts montrent que dès le début des Han l’État administrait des digues dans la région. Rédigés entre 192 et 121 avant notre ère, ces textes contiennent des calculs sur les dimensions des digues servant à évaluer les besoins en travail corvéable pour leur entretien, ainsi que des considérations sur la superficie de nouvelles terres cultivées à ouvrir. Alors que nous nous faisions une image de l’histoire ancienne du bassin du Yangzi déformée par les textes anciens, qui privilégient la Chine du Nord, les découvertes archéologiques remettent les choses en perspective et suggèrent que la mise en valeur des basses terres du moyen Yangzi a démarré de nombreux siècles plus tôt qu’on ne croyait.

Economic Growth in the Lower Yangzi Region of China in 1911–1937: A Quantitative and Historical Analysis

Through a detailed reconstruction of 1933 GDP for the two provinces in China's most advanced region, the Lower Yangzi, I show that their per capita income was 55 percent higher than China's average, and they had experienced a growth and structural change between 1914–1918 and 1931–1936 comparable to contemporaneous Japan and her East Asian colonies. This article highlights the unique political institution of early-twentieth-century Shanghai as a city state, with its rule of law and secure property rights laying the foundation for economic growth in the Lower Yangzi with long-term impact throughout East Asia.

Eurasian Historical Comparisons

The article discusses the conceptual and methodological challenges of comparative economic history, focusing on recent debates concerning alternative pathways of development in Europe and Asia, the agricultural systems of early modern England and the lower Yangzi region in China, and the historical demography of Eurasia. The article concludes that such debates support the perspective that there is substantial path dependency and contingency in economic history and that alternative development paths can be discerned across and within Europe and Asia.